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In the "Serial" podcast, Bergdahl speaks to Boal, the producer and writer of the war films "The Hurt Locker" and "Zero Dark Thirty," and explains that when he left his post he had planned to get word to superiors off-base to raise the alert about leadership failures in his unit. In his "Serial" telling, he said he wanted to trigger a search, a so-called DUSTWUN search ("duty status whereabouts unknown") that would bring his unit to the attention of higher-ups. Revealing the stunning immaturity that motivated his disastrous scheme, he said he had thoughts of emulating a fictional spy-hero from...

The owner of a Rochester, N.Y., pizza parlor pleaded guilty on Thursday to trying to recruit people to join Islamic extremists in the Middle East. The man, 31-year-old Mufid Elfgeeh, used the Internet to find potential supporters of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), send them propaganda and support their efforts to join the extremist group in Syria, officials alleged. To spread his message, Elfgeeh used a combination of three Twitter accounts, 23 Facebook accounts and one WhatsApp account, which he used to seek out funding and support radical fighters, according to details in his plea agreement. From...

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) has previously highlighted the hypocrisy of immigration expansionists who surround their homes with border fences and monitor who comes on their property but do not apparently believe the American people deserve the same protections. Sessions pointed specifically to open borders advocate Mark Zuckerberg who, according to reports, spent $30 million buying the surrounding four homes around his own property in order to get “a little more privacy.” Sessions said, “Well, the ‘masters of the universe are very fond of open borders as long as these open borders dont extend to their gated compounds and fenced-off estates.”...

The decision to refer the case of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl to a general court martial on charges of desertion by Gen. Robert B. Abrams, the head of Army Forces Command at Ft. Bragg, N.C., shows there remains at least one general not cowed by President Obama's purge of command officers deemed insufficiently subservient to his policies of appeasement and unilateral disarmament. As Breitbart reported: Bergdahl, who was kidnapped by the Taliban following his abandonment of a forward operating base in Afghanistan, was charged this year with desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. If charged with the latter, he could potentially...

"The USA Freedom Act has not made us less safe at all." Republican Sen. Mike Lee on Wednesday slammed Florida Sen. Marco Rubio for attacking Texas Sen. Ted Cruz over the USA Freedom Act at Tuesday night's GOP debate. Lee, who along with Cruz sponsored the bill that halted the National Security Agency's bulk collection of phone metadata, said Rubio was wrong to say the bill made America less safe. "Look, Marco Rubio has been attacking Ted Cruz on the USA Freedom Act, for his vote in favor of the USA Freedom Act, and he's been doing so by suggesting...

Back on September 20 (so, a full ten days before a three star Russian general strolled into the US Embassy in Baghdad to let the US know that airstrikes in Syria “start in 1 hour”), we said that the US strategy in Syria had officially unraveled. At the time, John Kerry had just concluded a meeting with British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond in London. "For the last year and a half we have said Assad has to go, but how long and what the modality is, that's a decision that has to be made in the context of the Geneva...

I'm for Ted Cruz but there is a lot to like about Marco Rubio, so I'm of two minds about the clashes between the two that highlighted Tuesday night's debate. On the one hand, I'm buoyed by how good they are. We haven't had candidates of this quality for a very long time. (On that score, while I am not a Chris Christie guy for substantive reasons, his talent cannot be denied.) On the other hand, I'm dismayed to see the exchanges between the two senators get so bitter. I think some combination of the two of them is ultimately...

Exit question: Why does this feel so much like a commercial for a personal injury lawyer? Is it because Rubio himself so often feels a little too smooth in his pitches or is it just the setting, which looks like a lawyer giving his closing argument?

MOSCOW (AP) -- U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday accepted Russia's long-standing demand that President Bashar Assad's future be determined by his own people, as Washington and Moscow edged toward putting aside years of disagreement over how to end Syria's civil war. "The United States and our partners are not seeking so-called regime change," Kerry told reporters

An intelligence community review has re-affirmed that two classified emails were indeed “top secret” when they hit Hillary Clinton’s unsecured personal server despite a challenge to that designation by the State Department, according to two sources familiar with the review. The sources described the dispute over whether the two emails were classified at the highest level as a “settled matter.” The agencies that owned and originated that intelligence – the CIA and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency or NGA – reviewed the emails to determine how they should be properly stored, as the State Department took issue with their highly classified nature....

The main Western-backed Arab rebel group in Syria appears on the verge of collapse because of low morale, desertions, and distrust of its leaders by the rank and file, threatening U.S. efforts to put together a ground force capable of defeating the Islamic State and negotiating an end to the Syrian civil war. "After five years of this war, the people are just tired ... and so are our fighters," said Jaseen Salabeh, a volunteer in the Free Syrian Army, which was formed in September 2011 by defectors from the army of Syrian President Bashar Assad. The Free Syrian Army,...

President Obama made a pitch Tuesday for Americans to remember their immigrant roots, describing the U.S. as the traditional home for refugees fleeing the world's worst troubles. He compared today's climate of fear over immigration and terrorism to what he called some of the darkest days of the country's immigrant history, such as when black Africans were brought in the slave trade, when Irish and Chinese faced discrimination and when Japanese were pushed into internment camps during World War II. "In the Syrian refugee of today we should see the Jewish refugee of World War II," the president said as...

A secret U.S. policy that prohibits immigration officials from reviewing the social media messages of foreign citizens applying for U.S. visas was reportedly kept in place over fears of a civil liberties backlash and “bad public relations.” Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson refused in early 2014 to end the policy, even though several other officials in the organization pressed for such a policy change, ABC News reported Monday. John Cohen, a former acting under-secretary at the Department of Homeland Security and currently a national security consultant for ABC News, said he pushed for a change in 2014 that would allow...

President Barack Obama says his administration will continue releasing terrorists from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, so long as those released are less dangerous than the jihadists currently fighting against the U.S. and its interests. The bizarre argument comes in a new interview with Olivier Knox of Yahoo! News and is one of several comments in their discussion that reinforces the president's stubborn nonchalance on issues related to jihad. Obama also shrugs off concerns about recidivism of former Guantanamo detainees, suggesting that only a "handful" of former detainees have returned to the fight and claiming that only "low-level"...

Secretary of State John Kerry said Sunday he does not believe that "the American people, who predominantly do believe in what is happening with climate change," will elect a president who does not "understand climate change" or is not committed to the type of global agreement reached in Paris. "I think, frankly, a lot of members of Congress are on the wrong side of history, and I don't believe you can be elected president of the United States if you don't understand climate change and you're not committed to this kind of a plan," Kerry told ABC's "This Week" from...

Kerry Says Paris Agreement Crafted To Avoid Congress By SARAH WESTWOOD 12/13/15 10 Secretary of State John Kerry said Sunday the climate agreement reached this week in Paris did not contain any enforcement provisions because Congress would not have approved them. "It doesn't have mandatory targets for reduction and it doesn't have an enforcement, compliance mechanism," Kerry said during an interview on "Fox News Sunday." Kerry said such mechanisms were not included because Congress would have refused to greenlight the deal. Binding legal requirements would have made the Paris agreement a treaty, requiring approval from two-thirds of the Senate. Because...

Former president Bill Clinton had a private telephone conversation in late spring with Donald Trump at the same time that the billionaire investor and reality-television star was nearing a decision to run for the White House, according to associates of both men. Four Trump allies and one Clinton associate familiar with the exchange said that Clinton encouraged Trump's efforts to play a larger role in the Republican Party and offered his own views of the political landscape. Clinton's personal office in New York confirmed that the call occurred in late May, but an aide to Clinton said the 2016 race...

Army Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl broke his silence about leaving his base in Afghanistan to NPR’s popular “Serial” podcast. In it, he claims he deserted his unit to highlight poor leadership” and rapidly realized he was “in over his head. “Doing what I did is me saying that I am like, I don’t know, Jason Bourne. I had this fantastic idea that I was going to prove to the world that I was the real thing, he stated. You know, that I could be what it is that all those guys out there that go to the movies and watch those...

Sen. Marco Rubio has built his presidential campaign around his foreign policy credentials. So why is he now undercutting this reputation by misstating the NSA surveillance reforms passed earlier this year? Two words: Ted Cruz. Sen. Marco Rubio may have framed himself as an expert in national security ,and among the Republican presidential field, he is. But in the wake of the San Bernardino attacks he has been remarkably misleading about American surveillance, even suggesting that those who have tried to rein in the National Security Agency may be responsible for a future terrorist attack. The in-the-weeds nature of NSA...

As the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was unfolding, a high-ranking Pentagon official urgently messaged Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s top deputies to offer military help, according to an email obtained by Judicial Watch. The revelation appears to contradict testimony Defense Secretary Leon Panetta gave lawmakers in 2013, when he said there was no time to get forces to the scene in Libya, where four Americans were killed, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens. “I just tried you on the phone but you were all in with S [apparent reference to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton],” reads...